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In this choiring, the soul looks upon the wellspring of Life,
wellspring also of Intellect, beginning of Being, fount of Good,
root of Soul. It is not that these are poured out from the
Supreme lessening it as if it were a thing of mass. At that the
emanants would be perishable; but they are eternal; they spring
from an eternal principle, which produces them not by its
fragmentation but in virtue of its intact identity: therefore
they too hold firm; so long as the sun shines, so long there will
be light.
We have not been cut away; we are not separate, what though the
body-nature has closed about us to press us to itself; we breathe
and hold our ground because the Supreme does not give and pass
but gives on for ever, so long as it remains what it is.
Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our
prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is
the soul's peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place
clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is
immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living
apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme
is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse
it brings forth gods, brings forth beauty, brings forth
righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the
soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is
its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies
There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life
here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing
of the wing.
That our good is There is shown by the very love inborn with the
soul; hence the constant linking of the Love-God with the Psyches
in story and picture; the soul, other than God but sprung of Him,
must needs love. So long as it is There, it holds the heavenly
love; here its love is the baser; There the soul is Aphrodite of
the heavens; here, turned harlot, Aphrodite of the public ways:
yet the soul is always an Aphrodite. This is the intention of the
myth which tells of Aphrodite's birth and Eros born with her.
The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him
in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to
human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes
up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.
But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of
earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.
Those to whom all this experience is strange may understand by
way of our earthly longings and the joy we have in winning to
what we most desire- remembering always that here what we love is
perishable, hurtful, that our loving is of mimicries and turns
awry because all was a mistake, our good was not here, this was
not what we sought; There only is our veritable love and There we
may hold it and be with it, possess it in its verity no longer
submerged in alien flesh. Any that have seen know what I have in
mind: the soul takes another life as it approaches God; thus
restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to
see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise,
that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This
become, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in
haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser,
so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in
us remaining but through it we have touch with God.
Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves;
but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the
Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant,
unburdened, raised to Godhood or, better, knowing its Godhood,
all aflame then- but crushed out once more if it should take up
the discarded burden.
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